Zeldin's performance was the most suprising, but it seems like a lot of that was due to Dem incompetence rather than his own Merits.
Yep, this. He was far from an ideal candidate to attract the New York moderate liberal, and I don't think he ran a particularly ingenious campaign, but the Democratic Party is so inept in NY and made such horrible choices this election cycle that even they could barely get a win in a state they should be winning by 20 points. And people probably have some notion about crime in the city. It all says much more about the dems than it does Zeldin being some kind of winning choice for the republicans' future.
Zeldin did not make any effort to distance himself from national Rs, even if he did try to brand himself in a "nicer" way or go into communities Rs usually don't go to. At the end of the day, New York voted for Biden by 23% so even if favorable turnout dynamics, you have to peel off left-leaning Independents who generally or almost always vote D, and it seems like that's what Zeldin forgot. I feel like he ran as if NY was a usual swing state.
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